DIANE Youdale can still hear the sickening ‘crack’ that slammed the door shut on her Gladiators career – and very nearly cost her her life.
The star was only 22 when she cartwheeled on to Britain’s TV screens – and boys’ bedroom walls – as Jet, but celebrating her 50th birthday today, she feels lucky to be alive at all.
14
14
Her high-flying career came crashing down in 1996 in a near-fatal awkward fall from a giant black and white pyramid during a show.
“I had my contender, bless her, in my arms in a rugby tackle,” Diane tells Sun Online.
“I was flying through the air with her, and by the time I hit the floor at the bottom of the pyramid, my head was in the way.”
When she hit the crash pad, she immediately realised something was wrong with her neck.
“I heard that snap before when I’d broken ligaments and bones,” she says.
Now, she is back stunning fans with her incredible figure, but for one terrifying day, she feared she’d never walk again.
Wembley stadium horror
14
Diane was just 26 when her death-defying fall took place during an untelevised live version of Gladiators held in the old Wembley Stadium.
The yearly live shows were a way of flogging merchandise to fans who couldn’t get enough of the TV series — which was watched by around 14million people an episode at its peak — and it was a way of auditioning prospective contenders for the next series.
Her fall took place during the Pyramid game, where a contender tried to run past her to the top of the pyramid — as Diane tried to wrestle her back down to the ground.
She’d normally shove the contender off the structure a couple of times before attempting a more spectacular tackle, which was “flying through the air with someone wrapped around you”.
14
14
Normally, Diane would try and manipulate the fall as she and the skewered contender hurtled toward the ground so that she didn’t land awkwardly.
“But on this occasion,” Diane says, “I couldn’t”.
She violently slammed into the crash mat vertically, “literally pencil-point down”, in full view of the horrified audience.
Diane immediately knew she was badly hurt as she lay in agony beneath the bright stadium lights.
“I remember thinking, ‘Have I broken my neck?'” she says.
Execution-style neck break
14
14
It wasn’t until she was in the ambulance later that her terror subsided when she realised she could still wiggle her fingers and toes.
Tests in hospital revealed she’d compressed her spinal cord — but stunned doctors told her she was lucky to be alive.
“The fact that I’m flexible meant I didn’t break my neck,” Diane says.
Had she not been so bendy, medics said she would have suffered a fatal “hangman break” – the type of fracture that killed prisoners executed by hanging.
Gladiators’ producers banned the Pyramid from future performances after her accident deeming it too dangerous for the series.
While recovering, Diane thought about how close she came to being paralysed or killed for the sake of a TV show.
“It terrified me so much that I could have sat in a chair for the rest of my life and possibly worse,” Diane says.
“I had a choice, and I made that choice, and that was to leave.
“I just thought ‘I’m out of there’. I’m sorry, but that was too close for comfort.”
Dangerous game
14
Even after she left, accidents continued to take place on the programme.
“There were lots of other injuries,” Diane says. “Cruciate and other spinal and neck injuries — which I found very upsetting, because I thought ‘they need to make this show a safer place to work’”.
One incident in which a contestant on the show was hurt particularly stuck.
“This piece came on on the 10 o’clock news and I remember just bursting in tears going ‘Haven’t they learned yet?’” she says.
“That girl had two vertebrae shattered in her spine and she was lucky she didn’t end up in a chair for the rest of her life, but she was in a body brace for two or three years.”
When Sky rebooted Gladiators in 2008, producers were anxious to make the programme safer.
Many of the games that involved a big fall like Duel, where Gladiators tried to knock contestants off a high platform with a pugil stick, were played over water instead of crash mats.
“So instead of breaking your neck or your knee or your ankle,” Diane laughs, “You could drown instead!”
‘Lycra doesn’t cover much!’
14
Diane’s decision to depart from the ITV show was devastating to Jet’s legions of fans, who’d watched her transform from a fitness instructor and dance choreographer before her time on the show into an icon.
Having signed up in the first series in 1992, Diane competed alongside some of the most adored cast members including beloved bad boy Wolf and Cobra, the joker in the pack known for pulling faces at the judges.
It’s hard to overstate the show’s popularity — it was watched by around a quarter of the entire British population and was recorded in front of 7,000 foam-finger waving fans packed into the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham for every show.
Amid the craze, Diane emerged as one of the best-loved Gladiators for her incredible looks and trademark hair flicks and cartwheels between games.
But her status as a sex symbol did have its drawbacks — she became an object of envy on the show from other Gladiators because she would get disproportionate amounts of airtime.
“I remember thinking, ‘I’m so embarrassed!’” Diane says, recalling the jealous grumblings. “But Nigel [the director] said, ‘When you give what this girl can give down the camera, then you’ll get equal time’.”
If you’re moving, then they can’t go, ‘Oh, has she really got that on her bum?’
Diane Youdale
Diane says her eye-catching acrobatic flourishes weren’t attention seeking — she just didn’t feel comfortable standing still and posing for the camera.
“I thought if I just keep moving, then people can’t see all the bits,” she explains.
“If you’re moving, then they can’t go, ‘Oh, has she really got that on her bum?’”
The gruelling demands appearing in skimpy costumes on TV meant she kept a strict diet for three months before every series.
“You’re just paranoid,” she says, “Because a bit of lycra doesn’t cover much!”
Body of work
Jet was intensely scrutinised as well as idolised, her uber-athletic physique being a dramatic shift from the super-skinny look which was popular at the time.
But Diane always believed in fitness as a positive way of transforming yourself as opposed to extreme dieting to “look like a clothes hangar for a catwalk”.
“I think it’s a desperate desexualisation particularly of the female form for a girl to starve herself that much so she feels that she can look good in clothes,” she says.
“You’ve got to remember that Gladiators in the early 90s was coming out of 80s heroin chic, so very thin models were becoming famous.”
14
14
14
‘I can tell when someone fancies me’
Nowadays, former Gladiators have all gone their separate ways — but Hunter, Cobra, Panther, and Lightning recently reunited with Diane on Good Morning Britain.
In the years since her time on the show, Diane has dedicated her life to helping others, working as a psychotherapist in two clinics in Wales.
And although she makes no secret about her Gladiator past, it can sometimes cause a problem with clients who come to be treated by her.
“Sometimes it can be a little bit awkward if somebody’s projecting something into the therapeutic relationship i.e. they fancy me, or something like that,” she says.
“You’ve got your client, you’ve got me, and there’s a third person present in the room called ‘Jet’.
“I know that she’s in the room. And when I assess somebody when I start a contract with them, I look for how much that might be in the way.
“It’s been very rare, when somebody’s been there just because they want to meet Jet.
14
“To be honest, it has brought some people into the therapeutic process with a little bit more courage because they do feel they’ve got something they can immediately relate to.
Her wide appeal is still a selling point, recently releasing a fitness video for fellow singletons using dating app Lumen just last month.
And her fans remain extremely loyal to this day, 28 years since her first appearance on the show, travelling from all round the country and queuing for hours at public appearances.
14
“I’m hitting the big five-zero and just generally love anybody who loved the show,” she says.
Anybody who would jump on a train for three hours and stand for an hour in a queue to get the old magazines and books signed, I’ll give my time.”
